We asked primary school teachers how they cut down on the amount of time they spend marking. Read on to learn their top tips.
- Ask children to open their books to the page they’ve been working on before handing them in.
- Mark tests one page at a time so you don’t need to keep checking the answers.
- Include a marking grid on a worksheet or in pupils’ books, so they know what’s expected of them. You can simply tick the appropriate boxes when it comes time to mark.
- Use different types of feedback (peer/self/written/live) to add variety and reduce your marking workload.
- Create a marking key to reduce the amount of writing you have to do when marking.
- Sometimes it makes sense to choose the most important focus of a piece of writing (e.g. structure, vocabulary, factual accuracy) and mark it based on that criterion alone.
- Tape your two marking pens end to end so you can easily flip them.
Want to save even more time marking? Educake provides formative assessment for KS2 English, maths and science. Even better: we do all of the marking for you!
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